Development of Catholic Doctrine: Evolution, Revolution, or an Organic Process?
How can Catholic doctrines unknown to the early Church be apostolic? It’s the oldest Protestant challenge — and Dave Armstrong’s answer leans on the same one that pulled John Henry Newman from Anglicanism into Rome: doctrine doesn’t change, but its expression unfolds organically, exactly as it does within Scripture itself.
Eight chapters work the question from multiple angles. The “progressive revelation” built into Scripture: the afterlife, the Trinity, the Messiah as God the Son, the Holy Spirit as Divine Person, the equality of Jew and Gentile, bodily resurrection. The standard fundamentalist misunderstandings dismantled. The development of Mariology, the Papacy, and the canon of Scripture traced historically. Plus four appendices anchoring the discussion in Newman’s foundational 1843 Oxford sermon.
Written from a popular lay apologetics standpoint — heavier on argument than on technical scholarship, accessible to readers who haven’t waded into Newman’s Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine. Includes Newman’s 1843 Oxford sermon, the Dublin Review‘s first review, and Orestes Brownson’s critical response.
Inside this book
- Progressive revelation within Scripture itself — the afterlife, the Trinity, Christ as God, the Holy Spirit, Jew-and-Gentile equality, bodily resurrection
- Vatican II and the Catechism on the development of doctrine
- John Henry Newman’s theory — and the chapter on how Newman convinced Armstrong himself of the Catholic Church’s apostolicity
- The historical development of Mariology, the Papacy, and the canon of Scripture
- Four appendices — including Newman’s 1843 Oxford Sermon and Orestes Brownson’s contemporary critique